Another year, another Auditor, another Ontario Auditor General’s report – same findings of waste, mismanagement and incompetence.

Once again the Ontario Auditor General, a different one this time, in her 2013 Annual Report, looks at Ontario’s electricity sector and reveals the incompetence and lunacy of the Liberal government’s managing of the sector and the incoherence of their policies.

Unfortunately their mismanagement is not confined to the electricity sector. The Auditor found that the government has continued to spend public money on programs without setting in place any metrics to judge the effectiveness of those programs, nor at times even to ensure that the services we have paid for are even delivered. Cost/benefit analyses are still a foreign concept to this government and its bureaucrats.

This does not come as a surprise to those of us who have been pointing out (here, here and here) that these policies are universally based on nothing more substantive than ideology, never on a cost/benefit analysis or factual data.

The costs to the Province’s ratepayers and taxpayers documented in the Auditor General’s Report 2013 are no surprise to those of us that have been decrying the lack of good government in Ontario.

According the the Ontario Auditor General, Infrastructure Ontario is an $8-billion mess and the electricity sector $50 billion dollar mess includes the $2 billion wasted on those not-so-smart “smart meters.”

“The total Global Adjustment charged to ratepayers has grown from $654 million in 2006 to $7.7 billion in 2013, as shown in Figure 10. With more new contracted generators, especially of renewable energy, expected to begin producing energy at higher contract prices, the total Global Adjustment is expected to grow further, to $8.5 billion in 2014 and $9.4 billion in 2015. From 2006 to 2015, the 10-year cumulative actual and projected Global Adjustment is about $50 billion—an extra charge to ratepayers over and above the market price of electricity.”

The Auditor General does not speculate on what this waste and the inflated costs means to Ontario’s economy, society and people.

As we have said in previous posts, the damage done to our economy and society is not only the needless additional cost for electricity, nor the wasted billions, which in many cases have bought us nothing more than additional liabilities.

Certainly these costs are important, but they pale in comparison to the opportunity costs incurred. What wealth and jobs for Ontario would $5 billion a year have created if invested by individuals in the economy? How many nurses and doctors, long term care facilities and other social benefits would $5 billion a year allow? How many billions in lost Gross Provincial Product from companies that leave the Province or go out of business?

Almost everyone blames Tim Hudak for losing the last election by telling people the truth. The Liberals lied and were rewarded with a majority. OPSEU’s Smokey Thomas believed Kathleen Wynne was lying and will cut at least 30,000 public sector jobs; he said at least Hudak is “honest and straightforward”.

The Mainstream Media helped by misrepresenting Hudak’s position and allowing the Liberals to misstate it.

The lesson our politicians learn has been re-enforced – never tell the electorate the truth. Next time we complain about politicians lying we have only ourselves to blame.

The unassailable fact remains, Ontario has an enormous debt and deficit, given the size of our population and shrinking economy. At some point in the very near future the Liberals will be forced to make much more drastic cuts and layoffs than Hudak would have because, beholden to the special interests that elected them, they will continue to ignore the problem and continue to increase spending and their trademark waste.

The longer they put the inevitable corrections off, the worse it will be for Ontario’s people. The smug belief that Ontario is too big and too important, and being part of Canada cannot meet the fate of Greece and Cyprus, is sadly misplaced.

The longer they wait, the greater the debt. Tax revenues will continue to decrease as the Ontario economy continues to contract; the result of uncompetitive energy prices and a corporate welfare strategy that discourages innovation and competitiveness. Inevitably they will have to increase taxes and further ‘monetize’ services to a tax base reduced by those who can moving to other Provinces for work. Increased tax revenues will be difficult to obtain from a population with more unemployed, struggling to pay ever higher electricity bills from diminished disposable incomes, the result of competition for fewer jobs and the cost of goods driven higher by unaffordable energy.

The problem with ideologues is that sooner or later they run out of other people’s money.

Looking at Ontario over the past 11 years of Liberal ‘government’ and being familiar with UN Agenda 21 one cannot help but think this has been a deliberate course of action chosen by ideologues who believe a socialist totalitarian state is in the best interests of Ontario’s citizens – or at least those that will rule them.

Maurice Strong, former Director of the UN Environment Program and the driving force behind the Rio Declaration and the UN’s Agenda 21 said:

“It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class—involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing—are not sustainable. A shift is necessary towards lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.”

“Isn’t the only hope for this planet the total collapse of industrial civilization? Is it not our responsibility to ensure that this collapse happens?”

Mr. Strong, a multi-millionaire who made his fortune from that same capitalist industrial civilization and took asylum in China as a result of his alleged links to the UN Oil-for-Food scandal, will not suffer from any collapse of industrial civilization given his wealth.

Most citizens of Ontario will though.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C. S. Lewis

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LSarc is grassroots protection of Lake Superior through citizen science and volunteerism. If you are interested in preserving intact ecosystems and restoring biological integrity of the Lake Superior watershed using the scientific method to test hypotheses and research, then you are LSarc
LSarc is proud to be a member of the John Muir Trust and the 60th member organization of Wind Concerns Ontario